Mario Rizzo and Glen Whitman's Meet the New Boss will be published by Cambridge.

Chris Coyne and I are editing The Oxford Handbook in Austrian Economics.

Larry White's The Clash of Economic Ideas will be published next winter.

Peter Leeson's Anarchy Unbound will be published in the next year.

Chris Coyne's The Ability to Protect: The Limits of Humanitarian Action will be published next year.

Ed Stringham's Private Governance, and Ben Powell's No Sweat book manuscripts have been completed and are under review with major university presses.

And, my Economics for Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow: On The Teaching, and Teachers, of Economics will be published by Universidad Francisco Marroquin Press. And I am working on another book that I hope to complete shortly with the modest title of The Political Economy of Peace, Prosperity and Progress.

So lots of new books to read and tons of articles --- David Skarbek just got his "Governance and Prison Gangs" accepted at the American Political Science Review --- so I'd say we are looking at a research program that is flourishing, rather than one that is struggling and retrogressive.

I'm always happy to use my favorite phrase ("It's a feature, not a bug") to describe the problems of corporate-state entanglements, and this AP report, which details the incestuous relationship between off-shore gas and oil companies and the regulatory agencies responsible for overseeing them, provides an opportunity. The revolving door here spins at least as fast as in the banking industry and with the same predictable problematic results, evidenced by the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Like the financial crisis, rent-seeking and capture explain a lot.

Despite the hopes of those who think this can be solved, as the AP report suggests, by better ethics laws or hiring "better" regulators, the revolving door that leads to capture is not a "bug" but a feature - the private sector benefits from being regulated and will always push to be at the table and influence the process.

The problem is not regulatory or ethical, but institutional. If you want to change the pattern of outcomes, change the rules. The only possible way to end the corporate control over the state is to reduce the state's sphere of influence down to as little as possible and ideally nothing. As long as there's the dead animal of the state (really: the citizenry) to feed on, the vultures of the private sector will keep showing up to get their share.

On a sunny day in the spring of 1986 (I think but could have been 1985), as I was entering the Center for the Study of Public Choice I noticed Gordon Tullock bent over watching the movement of ants that had created an ant hill in a crack in the cement in front of the Center front door. I said hello Prof. Tullock, but he just replied by pointing to the ants and saying "research". He didn't smile or chuckle, but he was studying intensely the organization of work that the ants exhibited.

I was not as puzzled as you might imagine because my main professor Don Lavoie, was fascinated by sociobiology and the study of insects. In his work, National Economic Planning: What is Left?, he utilized the work of E. O. Wilson on termites to illustrate the communication of dispersed knowledge. So when later that day, Tullock appeared in the Center's library where I was working and handed me a copy of his book ms -- Coordination without Command: The Economics of Insect Societies -- which was about the economic organization of non-human societies, I was quite excited. Tullock has pointed out in some subsequent writings that if he had published this book when he wrote it, he would have written the first book in sociobiology. The work was later published in form as The Economics of Non-Human Societies.

Mario Rizzo over at Think Markets points to a CBS Sunday Morning segment which was focused on the coordination without command that is evident in ant societies. He notes both the importance and the limits of the analogy to human societies.

What do you think we can learn from non-human societies for understanding complex coordination within human societies?

Thanks to a tip from a libertarian friend, I did a quick search of Anders Behring Breivik's 1500 page manifesto (which you can find here) and he does indeed cite Mises and Hayek in his crazed and offensive ramblings. In addition, he also references three Mises Daily articles from Mises.org.

There's only one cite of Mises, which is in a discussion of the nature of democracy where he also cites Popper. The four citations of Hayek all come from either Road to Serfdom, in the context of the problems of international planning, the size of the state, and personal responsibility, or "The Intellectuals and Socialism," in the context of the "second hand dealers in ideas" becoming progressively more leftist. (He also mentions Hayek as one of the "villains" of Naomi Klein's book.) All of the quoted material is political theory and none of it can in any way be connected to the guy's hatred of Islam, his opposition to multiculturalism, or his justifications of violence and call for a European revolution.

Just thought you should know because it will eventually be brought up by those with nasty agendas.

UPDATE: to be clear, there is absolutely nothing in this guy's ramblings, from what I can see from my skim, that even remotely suggests he desired a liberal order in the sense that Mises and Hayek did (as if his actions weren't evidence enough). This only goes to show that no thinker can control how his or her ideas will be used and by whom. It's a risk we all take every time we put it out there in public.

Scott Beaulier and I have a new policy paper out with the Cato Institute, dealing with the deficit, debt and debasement cycle in public policy. Our main message is a play on Adam Smith's discussion of the "juggling tricks" that government engage in to cover over their debts (literally in our world with paper).

Whenever I think about these issues, I am reminded of a scene in Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the movie), where Paul Reubens (of Pee-Wee Herman fame) faces off with Buffy after he had lost an arm in an earlier battle. He says to her basically that it is futile for her to resist the vampires because "We're immortal Buffy, we can do anything." She responds, "Oh yea? Clap!" I think of Geitner as Paul Reubens, and I'd love it if we had in place strong enough institutional restrictions on the juggling tricks of government that they could in fact NOT be able to juggle at all, and then I could say "yea, clap you one armed bastard." Unfortunately, that is not our reality, so the juggling continues in a frenzy.

New York City, as the rest of the East Coast is experiencing a scorching heat wave (it is 104 on my back deck here in Fairfax). Mario Rizzo reports on Facebook that NYU sent out an announcement that they will conform to a Con Ed request to reduce electrical consumption. In response, Rizzo quotes the great Murray Rothbard, who had a way to summarize his points in a concise and entertaining way.

In your opinion, what economists -- past and present -- have the same ability as Rothbard to make a clear, concise, and often profound point in an entertaining manner?

Back on July 13, Pete mentioned the Hayek-Keynes debate taking place at the LSE on July 26th. The details and participants have now been finalized. Jamie Whyte's teammate on the Hayek side will be our good friend George Selgin, who is a terrific choice. On the Keynes side will be Lord Skidelsky and Duncan Weldon. The full details can be found here. Good luck to Jamie and George and I hope as many of our London-area readers as possible can turn out.

I've been arguing for several months, as have others, that the ongoing sluggishness of the US labor market is the result of regime uncertainty over policy changes both past and potential. In particular, I have argued that the lack of clarity around the new health care law and its effects on labor costs are a major source of the problem. Critics have dismissed the regime uncertainty argument as a mere hypothesis with little direct evidence (despite Bob Higgs providing several examples). But now, thanks to James Sherk at the Heritage Foundation, we have some pretty good evidence that Obamacare has been a job killer and that the route is through employers balking at hiring thanks to uncertainty about its impact.

He offers data that show that job growth was doing quite well up until the spring of 2010, but that growth flattened out considerably after the passage of Obamacare. Here's his introduction:

Private-sector job creation initially recovered from the recession at a normal rate, leading to predictions last year of a “Recovery Summer.” Since April 2010, however, net private-sector job creation has stalled. Within two months of the passage of Obamacare, the job market stopped improving. This suggests that businesses are not exaggerating when they tell pollsters that the new health care law is holding back hiring. The law significantly raises business costs and creates considerable uncertainty about the future.

Here's what doesn't feel normal. In addition to slow and uncertain revenue growth, contacts in this recovery are frequently citing a number of other factors that are impeding hiring. Prominent among these is the lack of clarity about the cost implications of the recent health care legislation. We've frequently heard strong comments to the effect of "my company won't hire a single additional worker until we know what health insurance costs are going to be."

More generally, our contacts cite a litany of uncertainties as reason for a wait-and-see posture toward expansion-related spending and hiring. These include the longer-term fiscal plan at the federal level, the extension of the Bush tax cuts, and the effect of various regulatory proposals. I know it's difficult to disentangle these concerns from mere frustration about weak demand. But the restraining effects of policy uncertainties are repeated frequently and with great vehemence. In my opinion, a first priority is that government authorities bring clarity to matters central to business planning.

It's important to have both the data showing the change in the trajectory of job growth and the interview evidence from the business world to make the case for regime uncertainty. The data are plausibly interpreted by the regime uncertainty hypothesis, but without the sort of direct evidence that interviews can provide, especially something like the quote that concludes the first paragraph, all we have is correlation with a plausible story. Put statistical data and interview data together and you've got something. Sherk's short WebMemo is a very helpful contribution.

For those who have argued that Obamacare is a job killer via regime uncertainty, here's the evidence.

That is the subtitle of Peter Berger's fascinating memoir,Adventures of an Accidental Sociologist. And for anyone who has read Peter Berger, listened to him give a lecture, or had the opportunity to visit and converse with him, the one obvious fact is that he is never boring and certainly never a bore. He is simply one of the more fascinating people you will ever encounter. Charming and self-effacing, Berger is a great story teller and loves to use jokes to illustrate profound points. He does not rely on academic jargon to make his points, but instead writes intelligently in plain language --- this is as true for The Social Construction of Reality as for Invitation to Sociology. He simply invites his readers to join him in an intellectual journey to understand mankind in all walks of life and in all his endeavors --- even those that most of us would like to keep behind closed doors and hidden from public examination. He is simply curious about the way we live, work, play, love, pray, etc.

Adventures is an amazing read from his time at the New School to his studies of religion and modernity, from his work on The Social Construction of Reality to its unintended (and unwelcomed) influence among the post-modernist nihilists, from his explorations of capitalism and development to his frustrating interactions with economists. What an intellectual tour, and what a professional life well-spent pursuing one's intellectual curiosity about mankind!

I was fortunate enough to have been a fellow at Berger's Institute for the Study of Economic Culture in 1992 (along with David Prychitko) and then to have been invited back to be a lecturer in a similar program at the revamped Institute for Culture, Religion and World Affairs and to also be part of a study team on spiritual capital and economic development. Among my biggest professional disappointments in my career was that I was blocked in 1997 by the economics department at BU from joining Berger's Institute as a faculty member. But that is a story for a different day. My point is simply that I have learned much from Peter Berger over the years and continue to learn. I have heard versions of many of the stories told in these pages, but they always appear fresh to me and to always have a point behind them that is essential for our broader understanding of man.

Berger's memoir is based on a public lecture he gave at the Central European University, which can be seen here:

BTW, watch around the 25 minute mark for those of you fascinated by the history of the Austrian School because this is where he will discuss the influence of Alfred Schutz. For an appreciation of Schutz see the special issue of the RAE edited by Roger Koppl and myself -- 14 (2-3) 2001.